Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

Commonwealth, under a conductor or governor, to inhabit a foreign
country, either formerly void of inhabitants, or made void then by
war. And when a colony is settled, they are either a Commonwealth of
themselves, discharged of their subjection to their sovereign that
sent them (as hath been done by many Commonwealths of ancient time),
in which case the Commonwealth from which they went was called their
metropolis, or mother, and requires no more of them than fathers
require of the children whom they emancipate and make free from
their domestic government, which is honour and friendship; or else
they remain united to their metropolis, as were the colonies of the
people of Rome; and then they are no Commonwealths themselves, but
provinces, and parts of the Commonwealth that sent them. So that the
right of colonies, saving honour and league with their metropolis,
dependeth wholly on their license, or letters, by which their
sovereign authorized them to plant.
CHAPTER XXV
OF COUNSEL
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HOW fallacious it is to judge of the nature of things by the
ordinary and inconstant use of words appeareth in nothing more than in
the confusion of counsels and commands, arising from the imperative
manner of speaking in them both, and in many other occasions
besides. For the words do this are the words not only of him that
commandeth; but also of him that giveth counsel; and of him that
exhorteth; and yet there are but few that see not that these are
very different things; or that cannot distinguish between when they
when they perceive who it is that speaketh, and to whom the speech
is directed, and upon what occasion. But finding those phrases in
men's writings, and being not able or not willing to enter into a
consideration of the circumstances, they mistake sometimes the
precepts of counsellors for the precepts of them that command; and
sometimes the contrary; according as it best agreeth with the
conclusions they would infer, or the actions they approve. To avoid
which mistakes and render to those terms of commanding, counselling,
and exhorting, their proper and distinct significations, I define them
thus.
Command is where a man saith, "Do this," or "Do not this," without
expecting other reason than the will of him that says it. From this it
followeth manifestly that he that commandeth pretendeth thereby his
own benefit: for the reason of his command is his own will only, and
the proper object of every man's will is some good to himself.
Counsel is where a man saith, "Do," or "Do not this," and deduceth
his reasons from the benefit that arriveth by it to him to whom he
saith it. And from this it is evident that he that giveth counsel
pretendeth only (whatsoever he intendeth) the good of him to whom he
giveth it.
Therefore between counsel and command, one great difference is
that command is directed to a man's own benefit, and counsel to the
benefit of another man. And from this ariseth another difference, that
a man may be obliged to do what he is commanded; as when he hath
covenanted to obey: but he cannot be obliged to do as he is
counselled, because the hurt of not following it is his own; or if
he should covenant to follow it, then is the counsel turned into the
nature of a command. A third difference between them is that no man
can pretend a right to be of another man's counsel; because he is
not to pretend benefit by it to himself: but to demand right to